Mattys S L, Jusczyk P W
Department of Psychology, Johns Hopkins University, MD, Baltimore, USA.
Cognition. 2001 Feb;78(2):91-121. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(00)00109-8.
There is growing evidence that infants become sensitive to the probabilistic phonotactics of their ambient language sometime during the second half of their first year. The present study investigates whether 9-month-olds make use of phonotactic cues to segment words from fluent speech. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure, we found that infants listened to a CVC stimulus longer when the stimulus previously appeared in a sentential context with good phonotactic cues than when it appeared in one without such cues. The goodness of the phonotactic cues was estimated from the frequency with which the C.C clusters at the onset and offset of a CVC test stimulus (i.e. C.CVC.C) are found within and between words in child-directed speech, with high between-word probability associated with good cues to word boundaries. A similar segmentation result emerged when good phonotactic cues occurred only at the onset (i.e. C.CVC.C) or the offset (i.e. C.CVC.C) of the target words in the utterances. Together, the results suggest that 9-month-olds use probabilistic phonotactics to segment speech into words and that high-probability between-word clusters are interpreted as both word onsets and word offsets.
越来越多的证据表明，婴儿在其出生后的下半年某个时候开始对其周围语言的概率性音位结构敏感。本研究调查了9个月大的婴儿是否利用音位结构线索从流畅的语音中分割出单词。使用转头偏好程序，我们发现，当一个CVC刺激之前出现在一个具有良好音位结构线索的句子语境中时，婴儿对该刺激的聆听时间比其出现在一个没有此类线索的语境中时更长。音位结构线索的优劣是根据儿童导向性言语中单词内部和单词之间出现CVC测试刺激（即C.CVC.C）的开头和结尾处的C.C簇的频率来估计的，单词之间出现的高概率与单词边界的良好线索相关。当良好的音位结构线索仅出现在话语中目标单词的开头（即C.CVC.C）或结尾（即C.CVC.C）时，也出现了类似的分割结果。总之，结果表明9个月大的婴儿利用概率性音位结构将语音分割成单词，并且单词之间的高概率簇被解释为单词的开头和结尾。
